


Musings on a Prodigy

by voidwizard



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Shameless Projection, enabled by the etfc, have fun kids, will be updated as i get sad about essek again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26252983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidwizard/pseuds/voidwizard
Summary: Just some thoughts about Essek, regarding his relationship with his mother, his father, and his feelings towards his brother. Spoilers herein for EGTW as well as Campaign 2.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Musings on a Prodigy

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Essek Thelyss Fan Club for helping me work this out, and encouraging me to post this! This is... a lot of projection and me kinda sorta processing via fic so yeah. Enjoy! Comments and kudos appreciated.

Essek is young, talented, and vocal. With his near insatiable appetite for knowledge, he finds evidence that, at best, ruffles feathers in what he sees as a bloated theocracy, and at worst, would see him punished, jailed, and perhaps even killed for speaking out against the Dynasty's most revered tradition.

His mother tolerates it. Even with his dissent against consecution, his skill with the Dynasty's particular brand of magic would get him into the upper echelons of Kryn Society, into places even she couldn't go, and she could exploit that, couldn't she? After all, he aims to impress, and this is very impressive. 

His father simply cannot. This is heresy, Essek, he shouts, veins standing proud on his forehead, they could have you hanged for this! Essek can see perhaps a glint, the barest shred, of real concern, but it is quickly blotted out by choleric, intolerant fear. Fear of what will happen not to Essek, but to himself. This man, his father, is a selfish creature, and he can't be bothered to care anymore. Wordlessly, he turns and stalks away. Little does he know this is the last time he will see his father. Little does he know that soon his father will be back to Bazzoxan, but this time he will be swallowed by that voracious darkness, and gone to such a place even his precious Luxon cannot rescue him.

Soon after, Verin stops talking to him. He leaves, to train, and become the best servant to the Dynasty that he can. Though Essek has always found him lacking in ambition, he is shocked with his brother's progress, watching as Verin, commensurate to his own meteoric rise to the position of Shadowhand, rises through the command structure, becoming Taskhand faster than any had expected. They do not see each other again, face-to-face, until Verin's promotion is made official. There, in the umbral stillness of the throne room, Essek's chest swells with pride as the Bright Queen herself clips the badge to his chest, officially making him Taskhand Verin of Den Thelyss. But with this pride comes a twinge of something else, a plucking that Essek feels deep in his soul. Familiar, something he only last felt at the funeral, watching the casket that he knew was empty be incinerated in the holy flames of the Luxon. Guilt.

It is this guilt, pervasive and ponderous in its scope, that drives him further into the stacks of the Lucid Bastion, further into the myriad mysteries of the Beacons, further into the hands of the Cerberus Assembly. This is necessary, he tells himself, the answer is here somewhere. His father had to be consecuted, he had to be, he had to be! Strange bedfellows aside, he didn't intend to work with the Assembly long. Just long enough to unravel a few secrets. That would be fine, wouldn't it? He'd be in and out in no time, with the answers he needs and the Assembly too lost in their own misunderstanding to properly follow along. 

It takes the Mighty Nein, his friends, catching him in the midst of his deceit, consorting with the people who hurt Caleb, the people who forced Veth's husband to do terrible things, the people responsible for the deaths of many of his countrymen, to snap him out of his misguided sense of duty? responsibility? Whatever it is, it is gone in a flash, leaving that guilt, pervasive and ponderous in its scope, front and center in his mind. He's lost his friends this time, the only people who seem to care about him. They're going to turn him over and he'll die, all because- 

No. They won't do that, will they? Will they?


End file.
